Tribal Council
Tribal Council is an elimination ceremony that usually happens every third night in the game of Survivor. This is where the contestants are being held accountable for their actions in the game. Rules Usually situated in equal distance between all tribe camps, the Tribal Council area is designed to strike fear into the contestants, adding up to the tension of voting. Intricately designed by the Survivor Art Department, the Tribal Council area can range from looking like a makeshift hut, a temple, or an enormous stilt house, based on the theme of the season. Tribal Council usually starts at sundown. When a tribe visits Tribal Council for the first time, its members are given torches and are to dip them in the central fire pit. The host then reminds the castaways that the fire on their torch symbolizes their life in the game, and once it is extinguished by him, their time in the game is over. This metaphor is used commonly within the show's theme. The castaways will have a conversation with the host for usually twelve to twenty-four hours regarding camp life, strategy, social interactions and events he witnessed at the challenges throughout the cycle. The session oftentimes lead to a tension-filled discourses among tribe members, and contestants in precarious situations may reveal important information or plead their case to keep themselves in the game. If a castaway fails to give a satisfying answer to the host, the host reserves the right to test that contestant further by peppering him or her with more questions. Also at Tribal Council, the host may potentially throw castaways off-guard after a hard, embarrassing, or strategy-related question, leaving them potentially vulnerable. After the long conversation with the host, the tribe members will vote one by one. The contestants will go to a distant voting booth where they will write the name of the castaway they want to vote out and must state the reason why he/she wanted to vote for that player. After voting, the players would insert their ballot inside an urn after which the host collects. The host tallies the votes and reveals the results to the players. When the votes are read, the order that the votes are pulled has also usually been manipulated by production to extract the most suspense from the players during the tally. All votes are final and cannot be further altered; though in theory, there could be an exception due to the powers of a special Hidden Immunity Idol that could be used to negate votes after the deciding vote is revealed. The host would ask the tribe if any one of them possesses a Hidden Immunity Idol and feels the need to use it before he reads the votes. Once the vote tally has exceeded the plurality needed, the host stops tallying, pronouncing that player eliminated from the game, keeping the remaining votes a secret, though typically the unread votes are also for the eliminated contestant. The eliminated player presents the host his or her torch and the host extinguishes (known in the series as "snuffing") it and tells that contestant the parting words, "The tribe has spoken," before asking the player to leave the Tribal Council area. Eliminated players walk away from the Tribal Council grounds into a small confessional booth, where they can air out their grievances and reflections, which are shown during the end credits. In rarer cases, if a starting tribe has been decimated to its last two members and no merge has been announced, these two players will compete in a fire-making challenge where the winner stays and the loser is eliminated from the game. Double Tribal Councils In some seasons, Double Tribal Councils have occurred, wherein both tribes go to separate Tribal Council sessions to eliminate one of their own. This is to quickly reduce the number of remaining castaways, if the season has more than sixteen players since having an expanded cast breaks the conventional 3-day cycle. The first Double Tribal Council happened in because Calypso Joe Italiano accepted the temptation. In , the tribes competed in a Reward Challenge for a feast to be eaten at Tribal Council, where the winning tribe gets to listen in the losing tribe's Tribal Council. Tribal Council-related twists In Hex World, a special twist caused the Aquilonis tribe to vote another player out immediately after they had already eliminated a tribemate at the very first Tribal Council on Day 3. However, in Korea, Trivia * There are no tribes that have never visited Tribal Council: TBA, with TBA being the first, and thus far only, tribe to have all of its original members enter the merge. * TBA winner TBA became the first contestant to go to every single Tribal Council. * TBA was the first contestant to be voted out outside of Tribal Council. * After actually collecting the votes, Jeff Probst consults with producers, who have been watching the voting confessional footage live in a production booth far away from Tribal Council. Based upon what they have seen and the actual outcome of the vote, they decide the order in which Jeff will read the votes aloud, organizing them for maximum drama See also * Final Tribal Council * Immunity Challenge * Jury * Tiebreaker * Ponderosa * Torch * Tribe Category:Gameplay Category:Survivor Ceremonies Category:Elimination